New Twist on Physicist's Role in Nazi Bomb

Published: February 7, 2002

(Page 2 of 2)

Dr. Finn Aaserud, director of the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, said yesterday that the handwriting of all three had been identified as authentic, leaving little doubt that the documents are genuine.

In an interview, Mr. Powers said he wished Bohr had sent the letter to Heisenberg, so that the German physicist could have responded to its charges. ''My overwhelming impression was one of sadness that they had never been sent,'' Mr. Powers said.

Bohr died in 1962, and during a conference on his work in Copenhagen in 1985, Erik Bohr, another of Bohr's sons, approached Dr. Holton and two others -- the physicist Dr. Abraham Pais and the presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy, both now dead -- with the first letter, asking for advice on what should be done with it.

Dr. Holton, who until now has been under a pledge of secrecy regarding the contents of the letter, said all three strongly recommended that the letter be preserved. The family agreed, but because of the nature of the contents, decided that none of the documents on the meeting would be released until 2012, 50 years after Bohr's death.

But in a talk during a conference on Mr. Frayn's play at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in March 2000, Dr. Holton revealed that the letter existed. And with the play -- a hit in London and New York -- interest in the letter mounted, said Dr. Vilhelm A. Bohr, a grandson of Niels Bohr, and a molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore.

''There was such an active debate about it and we didn't want to hold up anything that could be of interest to the historians,'' Dr. Bohr said. ''There's nothing that we need to hide here.''

Despite the apparent clarity of the recollections in the letters, said Dr. Jochen Heisenberg, Bohr may have been confused by the militaristic, pro-German statements he assumes his grandfather was required to make in public.

In the letters, Dr. Heisenberg said, Bohr does not distinguish ''between what my father said in official places and what he said in private.'' Perhaps Bohr became so angered by those public statements that he did not listen clearly when the two men spoke privately, Dr. Heisenberg said.

Although Dr. Vilhelm Bohr takes exception to Mr. Frayn's portrayal of his own grandparents in certain respects -- he said that his grandmother Margrethe was not nearly so outspoken as she is drawn -- he still likes the physics-saturated play. And he said the newly released documents would do nothing to change that.

''I still the think the show is very well done,'' Dr. Bohr said. ''People come away very challenged.''

Photos: Werner Heisenberg, left, leader of Hitler's bomb program, claimed he had tried to sabotage Nazi efforts to build a nuclear weapon. But letters by the physicist Niels Bohr made public yesterday dispute that account. (Times World Wide, 1929)(pg. A12) Chart: ''A Fateful Meeting'' Papers released yesterday from the archive of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr shed light on his 1941 meeting -- long shrouded in mystery --with his protégé Werner Heisenberg, leader of the Nazi project to build an atomic bomb, and a young German physicist, Carl von Weizsäcker. From a draft of letter from Bohr to Heisenberg, never sent. Undated, but probably written in 1957. BOHR: ''. . . you and Weizsäcker expressed your definite conviction that Germany would win and that it was therefore quite foolish for us to maintain the hope of a different outcome of the war and to be reticent as regards all German offers of cooperation. I also remember quite clearly our conversation in my room at the Institute, where in vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons and that you said that there was no need to talk about details since you were completely familiar with them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclusively on such preparations.'' Incomplete draft of another letter from Bohr to Heisenberg, handwritten by Bohr's wife, Margarethe; never sent. Corrections [inside brackets] by Niels Bohr, added by his son, Aage. Undated. BOHR: ''. . . you informed me that it was your conviction that the war, if it lasted sufficiently long, would be decided with atomic weapons, and [I did] not sense even the slightest hint that you and your friends were making efforts in another direction.'' Bohr's initial letter asserting Heisenberg told him that Germany was building atomic bombs. The handwriting is that of his assistant. (pg. A12)